School

I went to a school reunion once many years ago. High school. It won’t happen again. Reunions are for times one wants to remember, or re-live.

Extended family

Family reunions are a little different for me. My growing-up family wasn’t that big, but even so, visits we’d have were segmented. We’d drive out to Brooklyn to see my Dad’s sister and my cousins, then another time we’d be in Long Island for Mom’s sister and my other cousins. I don’t think all of us ever got together at the same time. It might have been odd, since the relatives on one side of the family were virtual strangers to the other half. Since did not live in close proximity to either set of cousins, we grew up together in the strobe-like flashes of bi-monthly visits.

It’s even harder to get together when some of the family lives across the country. Travel_isn’t cheap, and schedules are hard to adjust. This is what my situation is today.

Family

You can imagine how pleased I am to be present at a mini family reunion. My other daughter and her boyfriend_(they’re great together) just joined us in Chicago for their first glimpse of William, their new nephew. William greeted them like they were family. While this might change in another 6 months, it was a nice start for our week-long get-together.

New Jersey next

Next week I will reunite with my original family. It will be the first time in a long time that I will be with both my brothers and my mother. My younger brother is driving Mom and me to see Michael, our older autistic brother who is nonverbal and low functioning. His 64th birthday is coming up. Hard to believe.

I am looking forward to it with some trepidation. I don’t really want to re-live the frustrating times with Mike, so it won’t be a reunion in that sense of the word. I do want to re-connect with him, but this implies that I had a connection with him before.

I really wish that he would cry upon seeing me. He did that once before, when I visited after a long absence; the counselor said he never reacted to anyone else that way. I wish he would cry, even though that would be devastate me. I would be devastated because I was not as invisible as I thought.